Both in silence, wide-eyed.

It felt like a vast ever-stretching expanse; and even though they knew the water eventually ended a few kilometres down, they made sure they never saw it. Cloaked in the shadow of the day, the setting sun and impending rain, he pulled his coat tighter around him as he sat next-to-and-across from her.

His lips curved up slightly, not quite a smile yet distinguishable as something. He tilted his head to the side and took a long look at her, her features, and then her. He stole glances at the water in between his staring. He was afraid the sun would go down too soon, that rain would come down too early. Maybe, what with his luck, the path underneath them would disappear and they'd find themselves falling into the frigid post-waste, pre-nature mix.

She had her legs folded underneath her, her skin hidden under all her clothes, save for a chance at her neck and clavicles every time the wind blew her hair back. Sometimes, she'd pull the scarf tighter, but she got tired and just rested her head on the arm placed against the backrest-railing. "Tommy," she looked at him. He had wide, smiley eyes, framed by thick lashes. Adolescence had carved his face out well, and he wore it like a fawn -- always a deer caught in the headlights, a deer caught in the sunlight.

He stretched his expression out into a smile, "Kathy." Lit. It looked like he was a lamp and he had been lit.

The last few drops of sunlight danced along her stocking-clad legs, then to her fingers, then on her hair. The wind slurred past them before she spoke, "Ruth's probably waiting for us in the car." She pushed a smile forward, as if begrudgingly.

He looked down first, the click of the key in the ignition and the roar of the engine coming to life, distant. Then he looked at her, and in that moment froze her. He froze her against the background of a setting sun, an oncoming thunderstorm, lying back against the bridge that kept them from sinking. He took her, her hair blowing in the wind, her fingers delicate on her lap and on her face; her eyes fixed on the horizon, and her mind on him.

She stood up and started walking, her ballet flats barely making a sound against the stone pavement. He lagged a little behind. Often he wished he had the guts to steal her. Often she wished they both did. Their lives had spun into a weave too intricate to unravel, and too tiring to put aside. 

*unfinished* 

Disclaimer: This is based on that one scene in Never Let Me Go. I just rewatched it for the nth time and I can't get it out of my head. Js.

and then we stopped fighting.

In the middle of the day, you will wake up to the sound of an empty house and an empty heart and all the thoughts that once haunted you won't be there. They will haunt someone else. You'll look around and wonder what happened to all the living and passion you had caged somewhere deep inside you. Your soul on fire. Your soul in flames. What happened to all the want, desire for more? You will realize, not at first, that you have been consumed.

You'll lie back down on your comfortable bed, stare up at the water-stained ceiling, and be okay. You'll pull your worn blankets up to your chest, curl up underneath it, and look for their hand under the covers. You'll hold it, and feel nothing. Safe, and sleepy. 

"I'm so in love with you's" turn into "I love you's" and eventually dissipate into nothing, a quiet understanding that the space between each other's lips are still saying it, a thin hope that things are as they once were; that the things left unsaid still linger in places no longer touched. Silence will speak for you.

This is what you've become: a faint hope for before, a need for routine, normalcy. Life is no longer ruthless, or raw. You've become ordinary.

we all fall down.

So will you scatter yourself all over the world, in all the places you've ever wanted to be? In all the places you loved? In the air you breathed and the lives you've lived. Will you let the world reuse you as a spec in the never ending, ever-stretching grind of life. As dust, in view of something else.

With all the others who have agreed to be the same -- to all the romantics who thought that they could still be a part of something meaningful even when they couldn't. One of the dreamers living in a dream, living and not living. Who refuse to be boxed, buried, caged. 

Be stepped on by a thousand different people in a thousand different places over thousands and thousands of years. And feel nothing. Be a part of someone's life, and never meet know understand. Watching and not watching, blind and blinkless existence of something that isn't and is. To be part of a memory, and then a chocolate box of memories, and then a scrapbook, and then a tree. Remembered and not remembered. But growing. 

Let the wind blow through you, finally. 

Errare humanum est.

It was simple at first, and innocent. You came with a heavy heart and a wilted frame, rattled bones and a rattled soul. And no one came when you came; just you, alone, with yourself. Everyday a jagged ragged drag to get by, by any means. 

And her, with her quiet pleasures and faint smiles, and her tendency to look away, like she wasn't interested when she was rapt in her daydreams. And with her she brought her careless. She dabbed reckless on her wrists and let everyone take a whiff, of her something sweet and something tangy. She walked around like around was hers to walk on. And when she turned to you, you saw her, luminous. She shimmered brilliant in the day and in the dark. 

You took her and you loved her, loved her well and true, and gracefully -- more than you had ever done anything in your life. She made you feel, didn't she? Like there was more to life than the getting-by's and the have-to-do's. She was a necessity, yes; but she was also a luxury one no one else could afford. 

Little by little, you lost your grace and you lost your gentle. You started to take, and she let you take her, whole. She leapt into the abyss with you -- into your dreams and your plans, and your world where your ways were higher and infinity was a concept you could grasp. She jumped and she fell, and you didn't catch her because you were too busy falling; you forgot that she fell for you. 

When you crashed, finally, you realized that your ways were far from high, and that your world was not one that tolerated dreamers, that infinity was a concept that refused to exist to those who thought it plausible, and that you couldn't live for everything. You became obsessed with your failure. All you did was think, and she laid right by you as you did so. Lying because she hadn't the strength to pick herself up, dust herself off, and show herself out. She loved you too much, too truly.

You who wiped the careless off her lips, smeared the reckless from her wrists, and told her she was all you had when you had other things in mind. And when your thoughts could no longer be contained, you needed to forget. So you left.No grace, not true, nor brave.

And since then she's carved her cheeks out with tear stains and heartache. Sleep. 

Give you, and I will give me.

All of me and nothing less, nothing less for the one who has my 

heart. And don't act like you don't hurt, like I don't phase you. I 

make you shiver in your sleep. I remind you of Sunday afternoons 

and walking on sand with your eyes closed. I remind you of the 

sound of the ocean.

Inelastic collision - I think that's what they call this. We met, 

somehow, and we never left. We crashed into each other and stayed 

in that state: crooked, broken, destroyed; and all the while, (un)

alone. It was like we forgot how to separate. We forgot the world 

without; we forgot the world. Me and you and me and you and this 

event and that event and then some more me's and you's.

But at what velocity? To what end? Will we never stop running? 

And what are we running from? And where are we running to? 

Who are we becoming? Who were we before? All this colliding 

and no reflection, no analysis, no papers.

What if we're just a concept, an idea, a theory? What if we exist 

only in thought, a model for everyone to follow, but a 

pseudoreality. Unattainable, and therefore perfect. And on a 

Cartesian plane, we are every point on every quadrant, sailing 

towards out there with as much vigour and determination as when 

we met, constant acceleration. What if this never ends.

We will keep going until there is no where left to go. We will find 

others, meet others, love others - but through it all, have each other. 

Despite all else, I will always have a you, and you will always have 

a me. No matter who we are or who we become.

But I'm afraid that someday, this ideal inelastic collision realizes 

just how improbable it is, and it faults. It will start losing its grip, 

and we'll start floating away, out into the ever-stretching out there. 

Then what? Then who? Then where? Everything will start to 

matter.

, all I want is you - will you stay by me? 

Patients.

Don't tell anyone, but my heart is waiting, it's spinning and riding on waves of waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. And all for something that may never come. Some dream that someone else is living, living out in movie reels in my head. Sometimes when I'm sure I can't wait any longer, I do. And then I just give up, I forget why I'm waiting. I forget why I'm holding out, and I'm sure that if anyone tried to ask me, I'd say yes.

I'd say yes in a heartbeat.

But no one ever looks me in the eye, or takes me by the hand, or ever means anything. They just pass me by, talking to me about their own waiting, for their own dreams to come true. Everyone seems to be holding out for someone who doesn't see them, for someone they're sure is there but they've never met. Where does all this hope come from? Definitely not from our cores, because more often than not, we're empty and alone and pointless.

There is love in the air, isn't there? It's a disease, that's what it is. It's airborne. It's in the water, it's in the wind, it's in everything we eat. It's in every handshake, every bowl of mixed nuts, every rim of every glass at every restaurant we've ever been. It enters and it never leaves, it comes in with all this wanting and all this alrightness and it sucks all our potential out and puts it on display, hoping that someone will notice how truly ill we are.

And this someone, they're sick too. But this love, this love will delude us into thinking that this person is the most amazing thing to ever grace the face of the earth. We might not even see the symptoms at first, we won't see their flaws, we'll just embrace them. We will miss them. We will crave them, because love has made us incapable of doing otherwise. It will drain us until we have nothing but disease.

Don't tell anyone, but they're all waiting, all waiting for something amazing to happen, to ride in like a tsunami and wake them from them from their numb slumber. They're all waiting for something grand. Because we've all got love, and those who say they don't are on some pretty heavy medication, for them not to feel the alone it induces. It makes us so aware. This is how it's all going to end. This is the next great plague. It will leave the entire population wishing wanting and searching. And in all this confusion, no one will find anyone; and hearts will conclude.

; nothing collides, this is it. 

I want him back -- the one whose name I didn't associate with abandon.